1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to transmission and reception apparatuses and transmission and reception methods.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a three-dimensional television (3DTV) broadcasting technology, a reference image, which is a left image, and various types of additional images having 3D characteristics, which includes a right image, a depth image, and the like, are transmitted to a 3DTV through a digital broadcasting network, and the 3DTV converts the images into right and left images to be reproduced on a 3D display, providing a stereoscopic representation. As a general method to present a stereoscopic representation, a side-by-side format in which right and left images are combined into one image frame and multiplexed to be broadcasted through an existing digital network has been widely used.
However, in the side-by-side format, the right and left images are simultaneously viewed in a general 2D terminal. Thus, in order to guarantee complete backward compatibility, a method in which right and left image signals are transmitted through two virtual channels, and a packet identifier (PID) to distinguish program data representing a stereoscopic image from the right and left image signals is added, is used.
In a transmission method including addition of a PID, right and left images are respectively encoded and multiplexed into one transport stream (TS), and the TS is broadcasted through one radio frequency (RF) channel. Thus, when there are limitations on an extent of a data transmission rate effective for the RF channel, a general 2D broadcast deteriorates in quality. Particularly, in an Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) format digital broadcast, an effective data transmission rate is actually about 19.36 Mbps. Thus, when the right and left images are transmitted through one RF channel, overall quality of a 2D broadcasting service deteriorates.
As described above, limitations occur when expanding broadcasting channel capacity for a high-quality broadcasting service in a 3DTV broadcast and thus, there is a desire to solve the limitations.